As most of you already know, I’m an author, a martial artist, a seminarian, and a deacon in the Old Catholic tradition. As a general rule, I release religious videos on Sundays and martial arts videos on Wednesdays. Sometimes I make an extra one or get held up or delayed for some cause unforeseen. Stuff happens.
I’m not always good at blogging about new videos when they get released. I apologize. I’ll try to get better. Today I have two to tell you about.
The first one is a conversation I had with an anonymous atheist who goes by the name FLR (“Facts Logic and Reason”) that happened a few weeks ago. Had a hard time fitting it into my video release schedule, but here it is (finally ):
The second one is a little heavy bag clinching drill that will make you suck wind like nobody’s business — and help you get fit to fight!
Robert Mitchell Jr. 
Blogging a video takes up a lot of bandwith, which means you are killing the earth’s atmosphere with more tons of CO2 to engage in your fallacious musings. How about you go old-school and just write them down somewhere for some lost soul to find?
Keep going notabilia, and your “uncontroverted futilism” will cause you to fall until you hit rock bottom. That’s happened to me. Fortunately you can’t fall of the floor so to speak, so I discovered that God is the Divine Ground of Being. And then I realized something important: only one thing can save the world from collapse, and that is if we all make *sacrifices* for the greater good. And as it turns out there is a religion that revolves around *sacrifice* — giving up possessions, turning away from greed, not worshipping physical pleasures, and so on. Gmail me at 12thkey and let’s have a private video chat. What do you say?
No thanks. “Uncontroverted futilism” works all too well to keep our feet on the ground and our senses intact.
Unfortunately, there is no “divine” anything to tap into in. There’s just us on this spinning rock and dark void of space, and our “sacrifices” will have nothing whatsoever to do with our ultimate destiny. Enjoy your possessions while you have them, try to tame your greed impulses, enjoy your physical pleasures, and give up the failed and worthless Stone Age nostrums of religion. And, of course, do your part for the environment by giving up video chatting.
That said, if you did indeed “hit a rock bottom,” then your religion may provide you with some solace to get you back above board, so if you want to pursue Catholicism, have at it, but leave the wonders of atheism alone.
Wow, that stings! How come you don’t want to talk? If it’s because you think I’ll be a jerk, you should know that I’ve had two public conversations with atheists that were really positive. I promise to have a fun, polite talk — no preaching or finger wagging or any of that — but I will answer any questions you have and maybe ask you a few that you can’t answer. To watch some of my other conversations with atheists go here: https://youtu.be/qT5OziuigSQ and here: https://youtu.be/SO61guUBk-Q
I appreciate the genuineness of your offer, but this is simple – there is nothing to talk about when it comes to Stone Age superstitions.
The divide is far too great, and atheists who engage in debate are on a fool’s errand. Would I “debate” an astrologer? A white supremacist? A phrenologist? A haruspex? Of course not.
Again, thanks for the invite, and perhaps you’ll go easy on the bandwith usage – that was the basis for my stalwart defense of atheism in response to your “atheism” tagged post. That said, you’ve handled this without calumny, so consider the last point yours, if you like.
“Last point?” I didn’t know we were keeping score! Here are a couple of things to think about since you don’t want to talk. Consider that certainty is the brother of fundamentalism, and fundamentalism — even atheist fundamentalism (as in Stalin) is a slippery slope. Also consider that people who are unwilling to talk to people with whom they don’t agree only have one option remaining in the end — violence. Consider that being more uncertain about your views and being more willing to talk with others would be better for you and for your cause. God bless and take care.
One option? Violence? How about avoidance and determined disavowal of engagement? Should have worked during the Crusades and the Americas, but that seems not to be the case for religions in history – murder, genocide, and now fundamentalist destruction of humans and humanism.
We need to talk. You’re in the grip of unscientific myths about religion. The largest database of war statistics on earth, the Correlates of War Project, states that religion has been a factor in only 7% of human wars, and that only 2% of all people killed in war died in wars in which religion was a factor. This means that religion is rarely a factor in war — but when it is, religion makes them less deadly. https://correlatesofwar.org/
Ah, the old “unscientific myths” redirect – this coming from an avowed disciple of Stone Age mythology itself!
Those statistics you cite seem preposterous, and you’ve provided not a single link or quote. Who on earth doesn’t believe that religion was “a factor” in the Christian-American genocide of the native people of the Americas, or in the Christian-America genocide of the African-American peoples since 1619? Or in the Christian-European genocide of native peoples across the breadth of Africa, or in the wars between rival Christian sects in the Middle Ages?
Why does anyone think that trying to point out basic facts and common knowledge to theists is in any way fun? You seem hopelessly mired in a theological morass. and it is nobody’s job but your own to get yourself back on planet Earth.
I am a reformed atheist myself. I know it’s hard to question. I cited a link to my war statistics — ask yourself why you didn’t check it out? The conquest of the Americas was horrific — but it wasn’t a “Christian-American genocide.” It was a lopsided clash of civilizations, a resource conflict of a sort that has happened many times in human history. The Quakers were the first organization to take a stand against slavery and were a primary force leading to its abolition in the western world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers_in_the_abolition_movement). Christianity has saved lives by the billions — from Christian hospitals and universities all the way down to Christian missionaries who were and are on the forefront of fighting disease, starvation, superstition, poverty and lack of education worldwide. Here is a post of mine with even more Anti-Christian Mythbusting: https://remitchelljr.com/2019/02/20/mythbusting-anti-christianity/ I’m ready to talk whenever you are!